Saturday, May 12, 2007

Happy Effin' Mother's Day!*

*That's a Pandagon-style Mother's Day wish.

I just read W. Bradford Wilcox's column for Mother's Day, in which he discusses why marriage makes better mothers.

The reasons are legion. Two parents split the burdens of parenthood, allowing mother's to have better, more positive relationships with their children. Married couples have more resources-financially, spiritually, emotionally--than one parent, which lessens the chance that children will grow up in poverty and crime. Happily married parents create homes in which fewer children are depressed. The list goes on and on.

Wilcox's point is that married mothers give their children better lives and that's something we should celebrate.

Wilcox doesn't bash single mothers (in fact, he praises his own mother who raised him by herself), but points out that life is much harsher for single mothers and their offspring.

So, how does this innocuous piece come out through Pandagon eyes? Well, needless to say, marriage doesn't look as good after the moonbats get through with it. In the comments:

Preying mantis--What a jackass. I particularly love his assumption that wedding rings have some sort of bonus, like +5 to Parent. Nothing he mentions as a benefit of being married has much to do with actually being married so much as it has to do with having two or more committed adult care-takers in the household. (I guess if you need to make an argument for polygamy, this is your man)

Kathy McCarty--He frames this as a problem with WOMEN’S behavior, when it is actually a PROBLEM WITH MEN’S behavior. (It would make sense to frame it in terms of men's behavior for Father's Day. But given this is a column about Mother's Day, I guess he was just being quirky, Kathy)

Nothip--Who is this tool? F**k him and his blame mothers for everything crap. (Notice that the article was talking about the benefits of marriage and only mentioned the well documented social problems single parenthood creates in passing. But Nothip must be feeling a bit defensive, eh?)

Kitty--Guys, if you want to honor motherhood, write a column about how good and important and fulfilling it is to fold laundry. I’m actually being serious here. Motherhood involves performing a bunch of discrete tasks which in and of themselves aren’t all that much fun, but which when done correctly produce a clean and orderly existence. (Kitty actually makes a good point that motherhood is much more about all the little things moms make run smoothly than larger gestures. But that's not really the way grander political columns work, is it? I would expect that sort of column in Family Circle rather than NRO.)

Cara--Wow. F*** that guy. I’m pretty sure that men like him are precisely why so many women leave their husbands. (Yes, all women want to leave men who think commitment is a good thing. That's why so many single women don't complain about men being commitment-phobic.)

It's always fascinating watching the Pandagonista mind work, particularly in areas where the facts don't back them up, like the way marriage is a much better system in which to have and raise children than singleness. Whenever studies are brought up to show how much better children do when raised by their married parents, count on the Pandagonistas to advocate gay marriage, polygamy, single parenthood and maybe even bestiality if the thread gets long enough. And every marriage they ever witnessed was a bad one. No wonder they are so dysfunctional.